Meanwhile on the political front…

(I read the inital article on this in Rolling Stone when it first came out)

Rolling Stone magazine reports that 176 tons of depleted uranium mortars were fired on civilian and military targets during carpet-bombing operations in Iraq.

That represents half the number of tons discharged in military operations during the first Gulf War.

The bad thing about the US employing DU ammunition of any sort is that a UN commission ruled the use of depleted uranium [DU] was officially certified as both a war crime, as well as a crime against humanity in 1992. This ruling by the UN council came after the effects of DU mortar fire was studied for latent detrimental effects on the health of both the targets, as well as those military personnel employing the DU mortars.

In the case of the military personnel firing DU enabled mortar rounds, cases of leukemia and lymphoma has increased ten-fold for that specific sample group. While in areas of Iraq that sustained DU mortar fire from US troops during the first Gulf War, instances of massive birth defects in children born after the Gulf War has more than quadrupled in the surrounding areas. In these cases there are usually oticable birth defects like distorted limbs and other abnormal physical manifestations.

Colin Powell himself said only recently that any attempt by the UN’s war crimes court, The ICC ratified in Rome Italy, to try ANY american for war crimes of any sort would be promptly met with a pre-emptive military strike against WHATEVER country attempted such an endeavour. That seems rather more like a provocative threat of WW3 than a ‘sensitive’ neo-con representative of a country that just wants to help a group of misguided arabs back of thier feet.

“The Pentagon insists that the weapons pose no threat to U.S. soldiers or to non-combatants. “DU is not any more dangerous than dirt,” declares Naughton, who recently retired after years as director of Army munitions. But a broad consortium of scientists, environmentalists, and human-rights activists — as well as thousands of U.S. soldiers who served in the Gulf in 1991 — cite mounting evidence that depleted uranium will cause death and suffering among civilians and soldiers alike long after the war’s end. DU projectiles spew clouds of microscopic dust particles into the atmosphere when they collide with their targets. These particles, lofted far from the battlefield on the wind, will emit low-level radiation for 4.5 billion years — the age of the solar system itself. Some doctors fear that long-term exposure to such radiation could eventually prove as deadly as a blast from a nuclear bomb — causing lung and bone cancer, leukemia, and lymphoma (a cancer of the immune system known in medical circles as the “white death”).

For further information on this please reference the above link or the Rolling Stone issue that it refers to (October 2nd aka the latest RS issue with a naked Brittany Spears on the cover)